Products that are Making the Difference

New products are introduced every day. But only a few manage to make a

difference. Some, on the other hand, make their debut with a lot of promise, but fail to live up. In thissection we’ll look at the products that made a difference during the year that is now coming to an end and will continue to do so in the years ahead.

Products

AMD K7

Year

after year, AMD had to play catch up with Intel. It had to keep its prices below

that of Intel, and still wasn’t able to get user acceptance. Then came the K7.

The K7 is the first processor from AMD that has gained user confidence as being

at par (on quality as well as on performance) with processors from Intel. Intel’s

fumble with its 1.13 GHz processor also helped the K7 on its way. Now, finally,

there is a choice in the processor market. And for creating that choice, the AMD

K7 finds its place in our list of products that made a difference this year.

Intel’s 810 chipset

First

you buy the motherboard. And then you go and buy a handful of other cards to go

into it–video, audio, network cards, etc. Motherboard manufacturers have in

the past tried to build one or the other of these add-on cards on to the

motherboard, but did not succeed, partly because they were not able to achieve

significant cost reductions along the way. What the others were not able to do,

Intel achieved by building video and audio support directly onto the chipset

itself, in the form of the 810 chipset. Suddenly, computer vendors now have a

way of reducing prices even further! Not only that, they can also develop

stylish new PCs (see "A Matter of Style", page 91 in the issue). For

achieving both, and changing the market forever, the credit goes to the 810

chipset from Intel.

Making the Difference

Visor

It was the Palm Pilot that made the PDA a useable product.

And it looked as if the Palm was going to be the only competition to itself.

Then came the Visor from Handspring that redefined the rules of the game. What

did the Visor do? It added something called the springboard port. Much like the

PC card slot on a notebook or a PCI slot on a PC, the springboard can be used to

extend the functionality of the Visor. Springboard products have started

arriving in the market, and can well mark a turning point for PDAs.

Incidentally, there is an irony behind Handspring itself. Readers will recall

that Handspring was started by the very same people who developed the Palm

Pilot. They even licensed the PalmOS and used it on the Visor.

Napster

There must hardly be anyone who has not heard of Napster.

This little piece of software has caused enough discussion and raised enough

questions not only in technology circles, but also in legal circles. Napster,

along with MP3, redefined the availability and sharing of music and along the

way raised larger issues of copyright and ownership of music.

It also kick-started what is today called peer-to-peer computing, where you

do not depend on a central server to provide software and services, but can

access them even on other clients connected to the Net. Napster may not outlive

the legal issues it has raised and is facing today, but it has demonstrated a

new way of computing, which may well carve out its own useful niche in the

future.

Aibo

The Aibo was launched not this year, but in 1999. But it is this year that

the real impact of Aibo was visible. Aibo is a not a computer, but a robotic pet

dog. At Aibo’s heart is a MIPS chip, and Aibo can display emotions and respond

to commands and actions. The importance of Aibo is that it has started off a

whole new genre of gadgets–robotic pets that can learn and, more importantly,

behave very much like real ones.

Flash

Graphics on the Web have always been a dicey proposition. First there was the

difficulty of creating eye-catching graphics and animation. And then you had to

make it as small as possible so that users would not be turned off by the

unending wait for your masterpiece to download. Flash was the answer to the

prayers of all Web designers, helping, as it did, to easily create stunning

animations that were easy on bandwidth requirements. No wonder then, today Flash

is a must-have in any Web designer’s arsenal.

iMode

Wireless Internet holds a lot of promise. That is, vendors have been

promising, for quite sometime now, that we are almost, almost there! But

somehow, we never quite reached there. Actually, one country–Japan–did, and

the credit for that goes to the iMode service from NTT DoCoMo. iMode uses

always-on Net connects from cellphones to access Web pages created using C-HTML

(Compact HTML) as opposed to the more famous WAP. The big difference is that WAP

is yet to create an impact with the user, while iMode is a major hit in Japan

with over ten million users.

Product categories

Webcams

Webcams, or digital cameras that can capture low-quality video or pictures

for uploading to Web pages or for video conferencing, are suddenly everywhere.

And helping them is the fact that pries have really, really come down.

LCD monitors

LCDs have been around for some time now. In fact, notebooks have no choice

but to use LCDs. For the desktop monitor, however, the LCD has always been a

very costly option. This year, the desktop LCD monitor finally seemed to go some

place, with prices slowly beginning to come within grasp. Next year should be

even better.

Digital cameras

At the other end of the camera story are the full-fledged digital cameras.

They started off as costly but inferior cousins to classical cameras, but have

now started giving them a run for their money, in terms of quality of output,

features, and price. Expect a lot more next year.

Rack servers

Servers have always been bulky and costly. With organizations needing more

and more servers and data centers becoming a reality, the space for keeping

these servers has been an issue. The solution to the "bulk" issue came

in rack servers. The servers themselves are made very thin, and many of them are

housed in one enclosure, sharing one monitor, one mouse and one keyboard. This

year saw a large number of Intel processor-based rack servers finding their way

to customer premises. Expect many more next year. Unfortunately, the cost part

is still unaddressed.

Home networking

Networking is big business and is usually associated with offices. But with

homes acquiring a second, (and sometimes even a third) computer, networking

these has also become big business, particularly abroad. Even do-it-yourselves

kits are available for home or small business networks.

Portable LCD projectors

Whether you like it or not, a large part of business life goes into meetings

and presentations. No wonder then that projector manufacturers are doing roaring

business. And providing succor to the road warrior is the portable LCD

projector. Just a couple of years back, portable projectors were bulky pieces of

equipment that could barely pass when it came to quality. Today, not only do

they provide very good quality, but have also become very compact and feature

rich.

Cellphones

Surely you will have no doubts about the eligibility of this

one to be in our list. The cellphone is fast becoming a must have, and, in terms

of availability, has probably overtaken the computer in sheer numbers. And many

cellphones provide at least some amount of computing support. Expect more in the

coming year.

MP3 players

These come in both hardware and software flavors. There is

hardly any computer around that doesn’t have Winamp or one of its cousins

installed. The hardware versions have not been that popular, thanks to their

steep pricing. Hopefully that will change in the year ahead.

Instant messengers

The next killer application after e-mail turned out to be instant messaging.

Instant messaging offered a cheap, instantaneous, and private, two-way

communication system, which was soon extended to include groups. Today instant

messengers are free to use products. In spite of that, the intense battle that

the majors like ICQ, AOL, etc, are waging for market leadership is a good enough

indicator of the popularity of this method of communication.

CD ReWriters

Not all that long ago, the only choice for personal back-up

was a floppy disk. Another choice, albeit a costlier one, was the Zip drive.

Then came CD Writers. They did not really gain mass acceptance, because of the

high cost of both drive and media. Over time, the price of CD Writeables has

come down to levels comparable to that of a floppy disk, making them universally

used. And in the meanwhile, no one sells CD Writers anymore. What you get today

are CD ReWriters. And these ReWriters have gained acceptance both in homes and

offices alike.